America needs "clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for—because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything." These words by historian Peter Marshall might well apply to the controversy raging over the Ten Commandments monument in Alabama.

An editorial in one Kentucky newspaper took this popular position: "It’s not fighting to keep a stone of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse that’s going to keep our democracy from collapsing…. Rather, it’s going to be those commandments written on the hearts of those individuals…that will spark a lasting and effective national revival."

It sounds eloquent, and contains certain truth, but it misses the point. Whether Justice Roy Moore’s Ten Commandments monument was legitimately removed from the rotunda of the Alabama state judicial building is not about whether such symbols have the power to propel America toward a spiritual renewal of the future, but whether they will continue to anchor America to the authenticity of its past. It’s about the freedom to proclaim, as our founders did, that American law derives its roots from a higher law—one established by God.

For every ten pundits spouting the "separation of church and state" (a phrase found nowhere in the Constitution) there can still be faintly heard the actual words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

So let’s get this straight. The firestorm over the Ten Commandments is not about government establishing religion. It’s about a few judges, at the behest of a few heavy-handed organizations, prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Should governments ban religious expression—a prayer before a high school football game, mention of God in a valedictory address, or a granite Ten Commandments monument?

The Associated Press reports that in U. S. District Judge Myron Thompson’s ruling this past summer ordering the removal of Moore’s privately funded monument, that its "placement violated the Constitution’s ban on government promotion of a religious doctrine (emphasis added). This phrase is decidedly different from that of the Constitution, whose words, first of all, refer to Congress, (whose sole power it is to legislate, unbeknownst to some judges) and second, were crafted to keep the federal government from establishing a state religion, not to keep private citizens from expressing a religious belief—even on public grounds.

Nowhere in the Constitution is there a prohibition against attributing our freedoms or our laws to God. If that were true, there would not be a frieze of Moses and the Ten Commandments on the U. S. Supreme Court building or similar artwork and quotations in government buildings across our country.

What this is really about is the political agenda of a few well funded liberal organizations, including the ACLU and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and their quest to expunge the mention of God from public places and public discourse. Last year’s ruling by the Ninth Circuit, outlawing "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance, is another example.

The ACLU has been busy this year, successfully removing eight donated Ten Commandments displays from public places in Utah, and desperately seeking to dismantle a ninth before some impressionable school child sees it. Even the Grand Canyon caved in this summer, removing a privately funded plaque from its South Rim. The plaque’s words, "O Lord, how manifold are thy works! In wisdom hast Thou made them all: the earth is full of Thy riches," were from the Psalms.

What we have with the Alabama Ten Commandments controversy is a Madalyn Murray O’Hair moment from which there may be no return. Americans must ask themselves whether the freedom to mention God ought to be rescinded, and every vestige erased—from our currency, our pledge, and even our state’s Latin motto: "Deo gratiam habeamus,"—"With gratitude to God."

The Ten Commandments monument may well be a 5,300-pound domino behind which many similar icons will fall. If "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," perhaps it’s time we declare our independence from the ACLU and their evolving view of the Constitution. Maybe we need to discover again the free exercise thereof, before the dominoes fall and it’s too late.